EPTSomeone asked me whether Psionic Storm damage was reduced by armor today. I responded "no." Obviously not. The only thing that would dampen Psionic Storm damage was the Defensive Matrix. "Oh," he said. That conversation was over, and that should have really been the end of it. But nope, that didn't happen.
I was curious, first of all. How much does storm do against a unit that has a defense matrix? "4," some of you veterans might say. Well you veterans need to stop being jerks, but yes, it does 4. Storm ticks 8 times over 7 game seconds, doing 14 damage each time. Every second attack does 1 damage to the unit itself, unreduced by armor, just as it does if the armor value of the unit exceeds the attacker's damage. Simple enough. But then, since I already had the mind controlled SCV and some units to test, I thought I'd do some more testing.
In particular, what exactly happens when the D Matrix depletes? There are two attacks in a non modified game that will instantly deplete a D Matrix, Nuclear Strike and Yamato Gun. I obviously had access to both, but only tested Yamato Gun. Yamato Gun does a standard 260 damage to all targets and is normally affected by armor. This held. One Battlecruiser shot the other and did a total of 7 damage. 260-250 (D-Matrix)-3 (armor). I healed the damage and moved on to the next test.
I gathered a fleet of 10 unupgraded Battlecruisers (25 damage) and shot a D matrix shield. The D matrix was gone, and the Battlecruiser had sustained 5 damage. Well that was interesting, to an extent. The combined damage of the Battlecruisers was 250, but the total damage sustained was 255. Cool, cool. So the first result was this: D matrix will always deplete by the full damage of the attack, but every second attack on the D matrix will deal 1 damage to the unit itself. You can make this more dramatic, but not significantly, by using a zergling instead. Within 50 attacks, a swarm of zerglings will deplete the D-Matrix and will have dealt an additional 25 damage. That's 62.5%!...of 1 marine. Good. It's also a 10% damage increase if, you know, you were in the business of using swarms of zerglings against D Matrixed marines in such a way that they would completely deplete the Matrix.
If the last result was incredibly underwhelming, this one is even more so. I gathered my same fleet of 10 unupgraded Battlecruisers, and used 9 of them to hit a D-Matrixed Battlecruiser. 4 damage, as expected. Then I upgraded Air Weapons level 1, raising the individual Battlecruiser attack to 28. I hit the damaged battlecruiser again. No damage. Huh. The Matrix was gone, but no damage was dealt. There's really only one explanation for this, but I wanted to be sure. I tested timing. As expected, the delay didn't matter. As long as the D matrix was still up, it "remembers" that the last attack it took did not deal the 1 damage to the unit. So what happened here? Well the 28 damage done to the D Matrix depleted it, but did not tick the one damage that it was supposed to. That's because unlike the 25 damage that also depletes the D Matrix, the 28 overkills and hits the Battlecruiser's base 3 armor, which resets the tick counter. Instead of being a tick counter on the Matrix, it's now a tick counter on the armor. The next attack, if it were valued lower than 3, would deal 1 damage to the Battlecruiser, but this one doesn't. That means that if, in theory, you dealt 125 then 125 damage to a D-Matrixed unit, you would deal 1 damage and deplete the Matrix. If you dealt 125 then 126 damage to a D-Matrixed unit with at least 1 armor, you would deal no damage and the D-Matrix would deplete. You would also gain 1 on the tick counter, but obviously this is not the compensation you want as you just lost 100% of 1 damage, after you clearly dealt more damage. (251>250, 0<1) And that's terrible.
I bet this was fascinating to you.
I am probably now down the value of the bet.
Thanks for reading.
